Okcoasterfest 2006, part 11, Holiday Park

This is the penultimate post in my long-running series about my trip to Oktoberfest in 2006.  Here are links to the previous installments.

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 1, getting there

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 2, Budapest, Vidámpark

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 3, Prater Park, Vienna

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 4, Salzburg and Essen

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 5, Schloß Beck, Moviepark

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 6, Phantasialand

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 7, Oktoberfest itself

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 8, Skyline Park and a return to Oktoberfest

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 9, Stuttgart Fair and a preview of Europa Park

Okcoasterfest 2006 part 10, Europa Park

We had to get up very early for our final day of park-going in Germany.  Our destination was a place named Holiday Park, which was one of the smallest we'd visit on the trip, but we knew it would have one of the very best coasters.  It was another park that Tim, Janna, and I (but not Greg) had visited in 2002.  Upon that visit, their giant steel coaster, Expedition GeForce had solidified its place in our minds as one of the top steel coasters in the world, and we were very eager to reride it.

By that point in the trip just to find clean clothes required a lot of shuffling through my luggage.  I had been reusing jeans for several days apiece but wanted to spare a clean pair for the trip back home.  Sadly some of my efforts at trying to maintain clean clothes were wasted when I stepped outside and immediately got my socks wet in a puddle.

We began the day with another hotel breakfast; we never wasted the opportunity to get a free breakfast both because they were generally of such high quality and because it meant we could go lighter on lunches.  As always I enjoyed my European breakfasts for their variety than I ever would a "Continental" breakfast in America.  The highlights for me at this meal were a really good gruyere cheese and some fish that I could put scallion sour cream on.

Though our hotel was convenient for Europa Park, it was otherwise in the middle of nowhere so we had to catch a shuttle back to the train station.  The ride cost 2.40 Euros.  Fortunately for everybody's sake--but especially Janna's as her cold was really beginning to get to her--the rain that had led to my wet socks let up while we were waiting.  Interestingly enough during our wait we saw a group of European coaster enthusiasts getting ready to head into the park.  We'd missed an event they were holding there by one day.  I'm not sure I really regret it; at the time I think we were all in the mood to be on our own rather than be a part of an organized group.

The drive was very pleasant, taking us through a few small towns.  The air was as clear as I'd seen it throughout the trip.  The inhabitants seemed to like decorating and gardening.  One place had a lot of garden gnomes, and another had a flower holder that looked like a blue bicycle.

We were let off at the Herbotlzheim Bahnhof.  There were a lot of people gathered around, but they didn't seem to be passengers.  It looked more like a social gathering of the townspeople than a bunch of train travelers.  We had to watch a few trains (including a very fast ICE train) blow by us, but were able to catch an earlier local train than the one we'd been planning for.

It was a strange train trip.  A group of guys in one of the doorways was listening to country music.  They all had T shirts with a longhorn logo and the words "La Kollegas".  They may have been drinking, though I no longer remember for sure.  It wasn't exactly the first thing I expected to encounter in Germany!

We changed to a "high occupancy train" headed toward Berlin (though we were by no means going the full distance, only to Mannheim).  We found our reserved seats occupied and were a little uncomfortable kicking the people in them out while others waited in a line behind us to get to their places.  Fortunately nothing came of it.  The only other thing I remember about this train ride is that we saw some medium sized mountains along the way.

To that point we'd had to carry our luggage along with us, but once we reached Mannheim we were able to leave it in lockers to await our return after our day at the park.  We had a bit of trouble finding them at first, but finally looked for the Reisenzentrum (travel center) and from there followed iconic signs.  We also took the opportunity to try to find a machine so we could get tickets for the shuttle we knew we'd have to take to Holiday Park from our final train stop.  Tim's research had indicated we should get that ticket in advance, but we couldn't figure out how to work the machine.  With limited time for our connection we had to give up.

This almost turned out to be a mistake, as when we boarded the shuttle at the next station, the driver clearly expected us to have bought our tickets in advance.  I tried my best in my broken German to explain our situation, "Wir hatte nicht zeit".  He ultimately relented:  "Ich werde verkaufen".  For 8 Euros he gave us a pass that would be good for 24 hours (and thus our return trip) for up to 5 people (not really as useful to us).

Once the bus let us off we had to walk down a gravel path to get to the park entrance.  It wasn't obvious at first how to get there; we began by trying to walk across a parking lot until we were told the correct way.  The woman who sold me my ticket asked me for my postal code.  I didn't understand her at first, and when she rephrased it as "Wo Wohnen Sie?" I answered "USA", which got a chuckle from her.  Greg had more trouble; he got stuck outside for a while when the ticket machine went down.

When we were finally all back together we headed quickly through the heavily wooded park to get to the ride that had brought us there, Expedition GeForce.  We passed by a show called Crocodile Diana that was just getting out, so we stepped up our pace to try to beat the crowd.  Along the way we also passed a few other intriguing rides that we didn't get a chance to try that day.  One was a ride that looked like one called Huvimaja we'd once ridden in Scandinavia, a strange kind of carousel.  We should have passed by a pavilion where in 2002 our entire group had been welcomed by the park and served free beer, but for some reason I never saw it.  Expedition GeForce was in a section of the park themed vaguely after a safari.  For instance most of the shops and stands there look like tents.  The roller coaster queue and station are very modest, almost entirely in the open.

On our previous European trip we had the privilege of getting exclusive ride time when only our group was permitted on the coaster, so it was easy to get plenty of rides then.  We would not be so lucky this time.  As a small party we expected no special perks of course, but more disappointingly they only ran one of the two trains, making for a somewhat slow-moving line.  Our wait was ultimately about 25 minutes.  Dispatches seemed very casual.  Many American parks have the operator announce "Clear for dispatch" on the microphone before letting the train go, but here all they said was "OK". They were playing very American rock and roll while we waited:  "Bad to the Bone, "Hotel California", and "Smoke on the Water".  It was almost as if we hadn't left!

We knew the back seat would easily be the best of the ride and moreover most people were waiting for the front, so the back is where we went first.  Bags of any sort, even waist packs (which I think are quite secure, personally), are not allowed on the ride.  They didn't even permit sunglasses, representing a much stricter policy than almost any other European park.  I wasn't wearing a waist pack, but since my vest jacket had pockets that included such items as my camcorder, I was nervous about whether they'd ask me to take it off as well.  On the other hand because it had so many valuables I was not comfortable leaving it in the bin on the platform.  Since we were not all riding at once we arranged a bag swap.

Expedition GeForce did not disappoint.  It remains one of my top steel coasters.  Though it is thrilling throughout, the highlight by far is the first drop.  I tend to prefer straight drops to turning ones, but Expedition GeForce's is an exception.  Its twist is much more effective than most, because riders are thrown up out of their seats first, then pushed to the side as the twist starts.  Even knowing it was coming it was a shocking moment and the back seat is by far the best place to experience it.  The rest of the ride is just a bit less wild, but includes a nearly perfect mix of hills and turns (in some cases both at once), marred only very slightly by two subtle brakes.  When I say subtle, I mean it too; only an enthusiast would be likely to notice.

Most of us took a second ride, but Janna decided to skip it because she was feeling so out of sorts.  While we rode she lay on a bench across the path from the station entrance.  Evidently it was a popular place for people to rest as she was not the only person sleeping there.  Not only did people do so, but a black cat slept in the area, undisturbed by any of the activity about it.

Our wait for the second ride took us to the point where it was time to think about lunch.  There was a stand nearby selling toasted baguettes that looked very tempting.  Though Tim and Greg, who had waited for a more prime seat than I, weren't yet off the ride, I couldn't resist getting one.  Among the options were "Knoblauch" (garlic) and "Kräuter" (like the garlic one with parsley as an additional garnish.  I got the garlic variety, which was somewhat like garlic bread and was quite good.

Tim and Greg didn't baguettes when they got off the ride, instead deciding to search for lunch elsewhere.  I was hungry enough to want something more anyway.  We had trouble finding a place we could all eat (Greg, in particular, had several dietary restrictions).  Incongruously we ended up in the kids' area at a stand called Holly-Snack.  While ordering we were "entertained" by a show about the movies, featuring a C3P0 character.  Later we'd hear a birthday song.  As we were leaving we saw them setting up a karaoke machine.  None of this entertainment interested us very much at all!

I had bratwurst ("mit brötchen") for the last time on that trip.  Though it had tasted very good each time I'd had it, I was beginning to get quite tired of it by that time!  The mustard dispenser was odd; the mustard came out of it in interesting ribbon shapes.

While in this area we saw something that rang a bell for some of us.  It was a "Goldesel", a donkey that gives gold coins (or rather, candy coins).  Apparently it corresponded to a German folklore story.  We remembered seeing another of these in another park on the 2002 trip so we knew about it but none of us found out the details of the legend.  Holiday Park's Goldesel is a bit cleaner than the other one we'd seen; its coin came out of its mouth, whereas the other one we saw shot its gold coins out of its ass!

We made our way to the back of the park via a path on the opposite side from Expedition GeForce.  This side of the park wasn't very ride-heavy so none of us had been in it, even those of us  who'd visited the park before.  Among the attractions we passed were a very small monorail ride, the "biggest portable wine vat in Germany" (or so I inferred from my best translation of its sign), and a carousel that may have been a new attraction for that year (again, I had trouble interpreting the signs).

As we got deeper into the park we eventually came upon a more interesting ride, called Burg Falkenstein.  This was a dark ride that those of us who had been to the park before had gotten a big kick out of because of its somewhat odd subject matter, which I characterized as "fast times in Medieval Europe". We had a long walk through the empty queue, so we were able to get right on.  There was some goofy music playing and a lot of no smoking signs.  The ride scenes depicted varied from the innocuous and humorous--a woman chasing off minstrels while an old man plugged his ears; to the fantastic--a dragon near the end; to the risqué--a man grabbing a woman's breasts and later a woman exposing her own breasts; to the grotesque--a dungeon with a very bony man and some battle scenes.  For various reasons, it's unlikely that a lot of this material would ever be seen in a US ride!

Our path next took us through a plaza with a few more rides.  One was a rather standard elevated ride called the Condor.  Another, called City Jet, was a bit more interesting, a somewhat rarer ride that in some places in the US is called the Roto Jet.  However we didn't feel we had enough time to linger on such things.

We moved on to the other roller coaster at the park, with the odd name of Super-Wirbel (which I believe translates approximately to Whirlwind).  We didn't expect it to be very good--those of us who'd ridden it before knew it was somewhat rough and not very thrilling.  However, I'm a completist about riding coasters while I'm on a trip and Greg needed to get it on his "credit list".  Tim just tagged along for the ride, while Janna skipped it entirely and watched our bags for us.  She's much less patient with bad coasters than I am so even if she'd been feeling fully up to par she might well still not have ridden.

We had about a 15 minute wait, much longer than Super-Wirbel was really worth.  It is located nicely amidst the trees, which is about the best that can be said for it.  It's not very tall or fast, just a bunch of turns and two corkscrew inversions.  Such rides were common in the 1970's, when going upside down in a roller coaster was new and exciting, and Super-Wirbel is of about this vintage.  In the US, most such rides were made by a manufacturer called Arrow, whose rides had a straightforward "out and back" profile for the most part.  In Europe apparently, most of these rides were made by a manufacturer named Vekoma (Super-Wirbel is identical in layout to several others I've encountered overseas, but I know of none in the US).  Their rides were twistier, but this isn't necessarily a good thing, as the turns tend to force one's head against the shoulder restraints a bit painfully.  I also banged my knee on one short hill.

By this time we had made it to the back of the park, where there was a ride called Lighthouse Tower that hadn't been there in 2002.  It was very similar to the Star Flyer ride we'd ridden at Prater.  It was something like a combination of a swing ride and a drop tower, with the swings being lifted high up in the air.  It is a ride type that is still rare in the US (and was rarer at the time) so we were eager to try it, though admittedly we'd missed the one at the Oktoberfest fairgrounds.

Though similar to the ride at Prater, Lighthouse Tower was not entirely the same.  There, people sat on individual swings, while here there was two-across seating.  The ride cycle was also much shorter; the swings were went up and down no more than twice.  While waiting I observed the clever cable system used to raise and lower the swing apparatus--the kind of mechanical detail I used to keep a sharp eye out for but notice less frequently these days.  From the top of the ride I saw an area of the park we hadn't visited in 2002.  It didn't look like there was anything particularly interesting there, so we didn't try to visit it on this trip either, but I always find myself wondering if I'm missing out on something when I make such a decision.

It was time to return to Expedition GeForce.  Along the way I had a chance to observe the log flume, which looked very interesting.  It seemed to have three drops, one of which was indoors and backwards.  I would have ridden, but Tim wasn't really interested in anything but Expedition GeForce, and Janna was certainly not going to ride a water ride while sick!

The path we took passed near some good locations for filming and photography of Expedition GeForce so we spent some time in these activities.  However though coaster nuts like us may like to take pictures, we like to ride even better, and it wasn't much longer before we were back on.  Even Janna took one more ride, saying, "I didn't come all this way not to ride".  The wait was about 30 minutes, more than we cared to stand in line, but the payoff was certainly good!

Unfortunately we were running out of time.  Holiday Park running only one train on Expedition GeForce prevented us from getting all the rides we'd hoped for.  I managed to snag one more (Janna skipped this one) and then we began to make our way to the front of the park.  Oddly enough, the music on the way out was more fitting to New Orleans than Germany.  As we left we saw that the entrance gate was closed; perhaps they don't admit people after a certain hour.

The bus to take us back to the train station was there but unmanned.  It took a while for the driver to materialize.  While waiting we saw another group nearby bring a wagon full of spent beers and champagne bottles with them.  We left at about 4:45.  After a short trip to the train station we had another wait, which wasn't the most pleasant.  The tunnel we took from the shuttle to get to our loading platform had a distinct pee smell.  We saw more partying Germans, but fortunately they were on the other side of the tracks from us so we weren't really badly disturbed by them.

Our train took us back to Mannheim.  Our final destination was Frankfurt, but we had a long enough layover that it made sense to get something to eat at the station.  We went separate ways to get whatever we felt like eating individually rather than have to choose one place to eat together.  While I was doing this my attention was immediately drawn to the departure board.  Those of you who remember all the way back to my Budapest report may recall that the board there had placards that flipped as the data on the board changed.  In Budapest the placards could only flip one at a time, meaning that a full update of the board could take 30 seconds or more.  In Mannheim the placards could all update at once, making for a most impressive display!

Janna was not feeling up to eating much, but joined me when I found a small place called the "Eat Corner", truly in a small corner of the station.  Greg joined us as well.  I ordered a salami sandwich, "Nudelsalat" (noodle salad, naturally), and a Coke.  I also got a green tea for Janna.  It all came to 6.75 Euros.  I started to try to order in German from the woman at the counter, but when she asked whether I wanted it for there or to go it became clear I wasn't up to the task.  Recognizing this she addressed me in English from that point on without my even asking her to.  She was also nice enough to specially cook up a spicy sausage for Greg (due to dietary restrictions he could not eat bread at that time).

We sat at a corner table while eating in the cramped restaurant.  We could see a man at a pair of slot machines, gambling in each one as long as we were there.  We were happy with our experience simply because of the friendliness and helpfulness of the service.

Janna wasn't hungry enough to eat at the restaurant, but did want to get something light.  She went to a produce stand called Frucht and Saft, where she got a banana.  The guy at the counter there was also very helpful.  I would not have expected such friendly service at a train station!

We next went to a drug store to look for something to help Janna with her illness.  We found one called Ihr Platz ("Your place").   We'd seen these in other stations too, but up to that point had misread the lettering, thinking it said "1 hr Platz".  After scanning the shelves, we found some eucalyptus cough drops.  She also found some cheap Niederegger marzipan, one of her favorite treats.  On one rack I found some long calendars titled "Unser Schönes Deutschland" with a lot of souvenir pictures.  Next we went over to a rather cramped newsstand.  Though it had all sorts of English-language magazines to choose from, we found them too expensive, so declined to get any.

As the time to catch our train approached we went out to the track loading area.  Along the way I saw some discarded mini kegs of beer by the trash.  Only in Germany!  We wound up sitting in a shelter with glass windows, which had the advantages of having seats and being away from the smoking area.  I'm used to bus stops and the like in the US having very dirty windows; these were so clean I almost walked through them!  Janna got a "Klare Fleischsuppe" (essentially just broth) from a nearby vending machine, again for her cold.

Our final destination, and our final city in Germany for the trip, was Frankfurt.  We had about half an hour in the train, which made it a bit of a waste for it to be one of the journeys where we had our own compartment to sit in.  Frankfurt is one of the more "American"-appearing cities in Europe that I've seen, with lots of skyscrapers.  Our first view was made all the more dramatic by lightning in the sky, but overall I didn't care for it; I preferred the older-looking cities of Europe.

The tracks loaded and unloaded in a building that looked like an airplane hangar, with a big blue neon sign at the far end that looked a bit ghostly from the outside as we were approaching.

After some of our problems finding our way from train stations to our hotels in the various cities we visited, it was welcome to be able to see the Hotel National, our residence for the night, clearly from the station door this time.  Most of the places we'd stayed at on the trip had a generally modernistic feel, but this one had a kind of older grandeur.  Our room had an odd double door.  Inside there was a high ceiling and even a chandelier.

Since it was our last night together on the trip I was hoping we'd have a chance to get together for a drink or two.  Had we not been somewhat exhausted by that point (not to mention Janna being sick) we might have gone out to look for a place that served homemade cider, as Derek had recommended we try.  However we just decided to spend some time in the hotel lounge.  Janna wasn't really feeling up to even this but said she'd come down if they had decaf tea.  I went down to ask the bartender, but he didn't really understand the concept of "decaf".  The best I could get out of him was that they had peppermint tea.  This turned out to be good enough for Janna and so she joined Tim, Greg, and myself in the lounge for a while to wind down.

Like the rest of the hotel the lounge had a kind of feel of faded elegance.  We sat on a red sofa and got our various drinks (and peanuts) from the tall, formally dressed, mustached bartender who had a slightly mincing walk.  Oddly, the "Haus Rotwein" (house red wine) was served chilled.  It seemed that when the bill came I was only charged for the wine, not for Janna's tea.

All in all it was a good day.  It was great winding up the trip with a great coaster like Expedition GeForce, but we didn't get as many rides as we'd hoped to.  On the other hand we were all getting worn out, even those of us who were not outright sick.  It was time to go home, as we would be doing the very next day.